Keep Learning

When trying to get a feel for a number this large, it is helpful to put it in everyday terms. For example, to save $1 billion, a thrifty saver would have to deposit $100 in the bank each day for over 27,000 years. If a person wanted to count to one billion and could spit out numbers at the rate of three per second, it would still take over 95 years to finish.

One billion, represented as 1,000,000,000, consists of one 1 and nine 0’s. It is regarded as 1 x 10 to the ninth power in scientific notation, where 9 indicates the number of zeros. It is equivalent to a thousand million: 1,000 x 1,000,000.

There are 15 zeros following the one in 1 quadrillion. There are three zeros per every thousand and six zeros per every million. A quadrillion is a thousand trillion, which means it has three zeros for the thousand plus 12 zeros for the trillion for a total of 15.